LSU Tigers: Kelvin Sheppard

BATON ROUGE, La. -- When LSU's Anthony Jennings and Travin Dural hooked up for a 94-yard touchdown pass in last week's 56-0 win against Sam Houston State, they removed a current LSU assistant coach from the program's record books.

"I looked around and I saw Steve Ensminger and he was going through a real tough time -- tears in his eyes, very emotional," Miles said. "I said, ‘Steve, what's wrong?' I thought something had happened. Somebody ran over his foot or something. He said, ‘Nothing. I'm hanging in there.' And I didn't really know what had gone on until I found out later that he held a record since [1978]."

Ensminger connected with Carlos Carson on an 82-yard passing touchdown against Georgia in 1978, a program record that stood all those years until Jennings-to-Dural last Saturday. So what did Miles do after the game to his assistant, whom he described as "a great coach and a great guy and loves his Tigers?"

He humorously twisted the knife even deeper, with an assist from the record-breaking quarterback and receiver.

"We gave what was the game ball to Anthony Jennings and Travin Dural to give to, then, Steve Ensminger," Miles said. "Here's what the ball said: the ball said: ‘Records were meant to be broken. The new record holders,' and then they signed their names and then listed what they had accomplished and they handed it to Steve."

NFL Tigers: The NFL announced on Wednesday that LSU had more active players on league rosters for opening weekend than any other college program. The Tigers' total of 38 was one better than USC, two better than Alabama and four up on Georgia.

LSU's total will increase to 40 this week with receiver Dwayne Bowe's return from a one-game suspension to open the season and linebacker Kelvin Sheppard's signing with the Miami Dolphins.

"Really I brought that to my team. I said, ‘OK, how many do you think are in this room?' And honestly there are a number. There may be as many as 38 yet again, right in that room," Miles said. "And I said, ‘But the balance is how do you work, how do you learn and how do you improve?' And if they do that, we may have another group that way. We have talent, we just need to play best."

Freshman DT practicing: Freshman Trey Lealaimatafao has recovered from a summertime arm injury and returned to the practice field this week, Miles said.

Lealaimatafao could get "into some live work here pretty quick. It's probably next week," Miles said, confirming that the freshman defensive tackle has been fully cleared to practice.

He's obviously off to a late start since the injury forced the former U.S. Army All-American to miss all of preseason camp and the first two weeks of the season, but Miles wouldn't guarantee that Lealaimatafao will redshirt this season.

"It's too early to tell," Miles said. "When he gets involved in the practices, should he be further ahead than we might guess, he might step in front of some guys. But it's likely that it'll take some time to evaluate him and see how he goes. I can tell you I think he learns [fast] and we expected him to be in the mix right now if he had not sustained injury."

Magee's workload: Two separate callers chastised Miles for not getting senior tailback Terrence Magee enough carries in the first two games.

Magee has carried the ball 12 times for 35 yards (2.9 yards per carry) compared to 14 carries for 65 yards (4.6 ypc) by freshman Darrel Williams, 21 for 110 (5.2 ypc) by freshman Leonard Fournette and 29 for 165 (5.7 ypc) by senior Kenny Hilliard. Fournette and Hilliard have also caught two passes apiece compared to none for Magee and Williams.

However, Miles insisted that Magee has not been demoted as one caller alleged.

"We want to give him a number of opportunities," Miles said, "and we will do so as we go forward and I am sensitive to the fact that he hasn't gotten enough carries and want to make that happen."

BATON ROUGE, La. -- The idea for this week's “Position U” series actually came about during spring football practice at LSU -- which I assume some of you know was my first covering the Tigers.

During post-practice interviews with Tigers players, it was common to hear defensive backs refer to LSU as “DBU” (short for “Defensive Back University) when discussing the team's proud decision in the secondary. After hearing that over and over for a while, I started thinking about how to ascertain whether that was actually the case.

Is LSU actually DBU? How would you even measure that? It seemed like a fun game to play during the summer when we don't have any football to actually watch, so I came up with a formula, pitched it to the bosses and set out to determine which major programs (I tallied results for each member of the big five conferences for 2014, plus independents Notre Dame and BYU -- 66 schools in all) deserve to claim the title at each position for the 2000s.

So I gathered the results of every NFL draft, each of 20 college football's top individual awards, coaches' first-team all-conference selections and consensus All-America picks for each season since 2000-01 and came up with a point system to reward those accomplishments. The team with the most points won the “Position U” title for the 2000s.

It isn't a perfect system -- for instance Notre Dame deserves to rank toward the top of the list at tight end, but the Fighting Irish is penalized in this system by not playing in a conference and thus losing out on that category of points -- and I actually considered leaving the independents out of the equation. I decided, however, to include them and simply include that asterisk within the stories.

The system is also generous to programs such as Louisville that competed in smaller conferences and earned points against lesser competition before jumping into the bigger pond of major-conference football. But otherwise, I think keeping things simple and basing it on the criteria I selected is an effective way of gauging overall excellence.

So since this is an LSU blog, let's take a quick look at how the Tigers fared -- and there was plenty of excellence to gauge:

Quarterback: Tied for 16th place with 32 points. No. 1 overall NFL draft pick JaMarcus Russell is the headliner here as one of only two LSU first-team all-conference picks and as the only QB to go in the first three rounds. The Tigers had six QBs drafted overall.

Wide receiver: Second with 124 points. I was well aware of LSU's numerous star wideouts through the years, but I have to admit being a bit surprised when I saw that the Tigers trailed only USC in the position rankings. That's impressive stuff -- and it's largely because of the 14 wideouts that the Tigers who have been drafted since 2001.

Tight end: Tied for 40th with 10 points. The Tigers have had only one all-conference pick (Robert Royal) and two draft picks at tight end (Royal and Keith Zinger) since the 2000-01 season.

Offensive line: Tied for 21st with 94 points. Although the Tigers have had nine all-conference picks and seven draft picks from the line since 2000-01, it has been a bit of a disappointment overall -- which is part of the reason why Jeff Grimes is now coaching the group. The Tigers have not had a first-round offensive lineman in this time period and only had one second-rounder.

Linebacker: Tied for 22nd with 60 points. I realize that LSU's defensive star power has been on the line and in the secondary, but I kind of expected LSU to fare a bit better here. But the Tigers had just seven all-conference linebackers and five draft picks -- only two of whom (Kevin Minter and Kelvin Sheppard) went in rounds 1-3.

Defensive back: Third with 218 points. Well, they aren't DBU after all, but the Tigers did fare extremely well. With six All-Americans and four national awards, LSU threatened Oklahoma for second on the list, but finished a ways behind champion Ohio State.

Kicker: Tied for 27th with 28 points. The Tigers did have a consensus All-America kicker (Josh Jasper in 2010), but had just two all-conference kickers and one punter. Seventh-round pick Donnie Jones became the only draftee at either position in 2004.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- If you see LSU linebacker Lamin Barrow's first name and wonder how to properly pronounce it, just remember, it rhymes with "machine."

As in, "Lamin, the Tackling Machine."

That might be appropriate for the rising senior linebacker coming off a junior year in which he eclipsed the 100-tackle mark (104), finishing second on the team behind potential NFL first-round draft pick Kevin Minter. Many expected Barrow, who accumulated his numbers playing on the weak side, to move into Minter's spot at middle linebacker, a position that, in recent seasons, been manned by future NFL players like Minter, Kelvin Sheppard and Jacob Cutrera.

That, however, hasn't happened, at least not yet as LSU experiments with junior D.J. Welter, who has never started a game for the Tigers, in the middle. It doesn't mean that Barrow won't be the linebackers' leader in a way that Sheppard and Minter clearly were.

The Tigers were dominant because of a defensive line loaded with NFL prospects and a secondary with a Heisman Trophy candidate in Tyrann Mathieu who was going to harass opponents into turnovers and create touchdowns for the sometimes stagnant offense. The linebackers, unspectacular a season ago, were sort of along for the ride.